


Unconditional Love

by iamdkscully



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s10e20 Unending, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4067311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamdkscully/pseuds/iamdkscully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, Teal'c, and fifty years...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unconditional Love

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Someone mentioned that while watching Unending it seemed to them that perhaps Sam and Teal’c might have become more than just friends. After all, she had no real chemistry with MItchell (and he was pretty much an ass that entire 50 years), Daniel was like her brother (nevermind the fact that he hooked up with Vala), and I really don’t think Landry was an option. ;)
> 
> So, did she spend all those years alone or was there something more?
> 
> A big thank you to webbo for being my second set of eyes! :)

**Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. -- John 15:13**

They stood staring at one another for several minutes, searching the storehouse of memories that lay in the eyes of the other. She couldn’t keep the tears at bay as she finally broke his gaze, and fell one last time into the familiar rescue of his strong arms. He held her tightly, soothing her sobs, as he often had throughout their journey together. He had spent _this_ life reveling in his role as her rock, the one she depended upon to keep herself steady, keep herself in check. He was her ever logical Spock, whose stoicism often put her in her place, and kept her grounded.

But, they didn’t have much more time before they’d have to strip this all away and find the past for which they’d been so desperately yearning. Fifty years of missed birthdays and anniversaries, missing loved ones, and a need to feel they hadn’t lost contact with every aspect of home. Five decades that had forced them to rely on a comfort they could only find in one another.

He’d held her the night she realized she might never be able to get them back and that she’d never see O’Neill again. He’d held her when she’d cried because she’d been so afraid that she’d forgotten the man she loved. First, his birthday passed her by. Then, try as she might, she struggled to remember the sound of his voice whispering “ _Carter_ ” in her ear, the way he smelled after chopping wood on a cold Minnesota night, and the way he always smiled at her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

He would never be the man she longed for, but he’d been there for her, always listening, always offering another piece of himself, shouldering her burden as best he could. In return she’d sat with her head on his shoulder, her hand in his, as she reminded him of the differences between living and making a life for yourself. She assured him that Rya’c would not have forgotten him. That his son would continue his legacy as a leader of his people and that he’d see his grandchildren one day do the same. And, it was in her eyes that he saw that hope was not so easily lost, and that love could last even as senses failed.

Their friendship had withstood the tests and rigors of time. Yet here they were, thousands of light-years and half a century away from home, uncertain of how friendship and love could help them in their attempts to bend the laws of space and time and send themselves home again. He wondered what time would bring him if they succeeded in this last quest. Could he truly leave this life, enshrining it in his past, knowing that he and he alone would treasure all of those nights bringing her coffee as she sat alone in engineering running failed simulation after failed simulation, calling her bluff playing poker in the mess hall with Vala, Daniel, and MItchell, and blissful but bitter nights spent with his arms secure and tight around her as they lay pining for another place, another time, and another’s more intimate caress.

_“You know, as hard as it is for us not knowing, it must be torture for you not to tell us.”_

She looks at him, a mixture of teasing and curiosity that he’d grown to love sparkling in her eyes. It’d been decades since he’d seen her eyes smile so beautifully. His heart hardens, jealous for just a moment of her ignorance and her joy, and then, just as quickly, it softens as easily as the smile that spreads across his face in answer to her query. And with a signature tilt of his head, he knows _that_ smile is proof of how _this_ life was the one that was truly meant to be.

_“Indeed.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N2: “Ours is the only reality of consequence.” -- Teal'c, Point of View.


End file.
